Adobe has issued a statement this morning that they will effectively be abandoning Flash Player support on Linux. After Flash Player 11.2 they will no longer be providing updates for Linux users but just maintaining the 11.2 release. Google is expected to take over with a Flash Player implementation based upon a new API, but only for Google Chrome-based web-browsers.

Hitting my inbox this morning was Adobe and Google Partnering for Flash Player on Linux. The statement is brief but basically it says Google and Adobe have been working to develop a modern API for web-browser plug-ins. The result of this collaboration is PPAPI (codenamed "Pepper") and is designed to be work for different web-browsers and operating systems. The Pepper Plug-In API is something that Google has been working on for at least the past three years to replace NPAPI (the Netscape Plug-In API).

PPAPI is designed to work across browsers and platforms, but as of right now Google Chrome/Chromium is the only supported web-browser. Mozilla has previously said they are not interested in supporting PPAPI for Firefox.

Adobe has partnered with Google now to provide a PPAPI-based implementation of Flash for x86/x86_64 that's supported by the Google Chrome browser. Google is expected to begin shipping this new Flash Player within their Chrome browser later this year for all supported platforms. As far as any other browsers getting in on this action, Adobe doesn't mention any others.

As a result of Google supporting the PPAPI-based implementation, Adobe says, "For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the "Pepper" API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe."

So Linux users will only be able to get Flash on Linux from the built-in plug-in to Google Chrome. PPAPI though should be universal to all supported web-browsers / operating systems, but right now there is no other adoption and Mozilla is apparently uninterested. At the same time, it appears Adobe will continue distributing Flash Player on Windows through its normal channels.

Adobe Flash going forward on Linux will just be coming through Chrome/Chromium for future updates and then maybe some wrangling to get it to other browsers should those developers choose to support the Pepper Plug-In API. There is a consolation prize though and that is Adobe says they will continue maintaining the existing Adobe Flash Player 11.2 for Linux for a period of five years. You won't be getting new features and support, but likely just bug-fixes to the x86/x86_64 plug-in. "Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release."

There might be a hint of good news. Adobe says they will also update their Flash/SWF white-paper and release a a debug version of the Linux Flash Player. "We will be providing a debug player implementation of the Flash Player browser plugin on Linux, and will update the whitepaper once we have more details on how it will be distributed." This in theory could help out projects like Lightspark and Gnash. The open-source Flash Player alternatives have been in a hopeless game of catch-up until now in supporting modern versions of the Flash specification and to work reliably across the web. With a debug-enabled player and possibly some documentation, they might be able to make some noticeable progress towards the latest version.

As far as Windows and Mac OS X users, Adobe says, "Flash Player will continue to support browsers using non-”Pepper” plugin APIs on platforms other than Linux."

This news comes less than one year after Adobe finally managed to deliver mainline 64-bit Flash support in parity with the 32-bit version.

It really seems the end of flash in near, they already killed off mobile flash and now they are doing the same to Linux.
And i'm still not convinced the web is ready for it yet, HTML 5 video is still not common and many mobile web browsers still do not support it.

Adobe released the official Flash Player 11.2 for Linux release this week, which will serve as the last major version of their Flash/SWF player on Linux.

Back in October of last year is when Flash Player 11.2 went into beta across all supported platforms. Unfortunately, in February is when we received news that Adobe would be abandoning Flash Player Linux support.

Going forward, Adobe will just be maintaining Flash 11.2 for Linux and not be providing any new releases. Flash 11.2 will be maintained with security/bug-fixes for a period of five years. Meanwhile, Adobe is letting Google work on Flash support inside their Chrome/Chromium web-browser using the Pepper API (PPAPI), but this interface isn't supported by Mozilla Firefox or other web-browsers. Flash Player for Linux will no longer be available as an independent x86/x86_64 library.

Linux desktop users are left to either using Flash Player 11.2 indefinitely, use Google's web-browser on Linux, or to ultimately switch to one of the open-source alternatives like Lightspark or Gnash. Sadly, these open-source Flash/SWF alternatives are hopelessly outdated and don't always work well -- even for YouTube and other popular Internet destinations. Linux users can just hope that within the next five years that Adobe Flash becomes dead and replaced by HTML5 and friends.

Flash still exists at all? In other news, Linux just got a new feature, less annoying adds in your web browser! :D
All decent browsers support HTML5 video (and have for some time). Only reason we still use flash for anything at work is for video in IE. One less pain in the arse technology holding back the modernisation of www (it's impossible to interact with proper REST API's).

News - FF Multi Converter
sites.google.com/site/ffmulticonverter/news
FF Multi Converter finally has its own homepage! The page created to gather all things relating FF Multi Converter together. This one will replace the wiki on ...

This basically says "Using ffmpeg, take the file FILE_NAME.flv, change the sample rate
(this is the -ar 22050 part, and it makes a world of difference to the audio quality),
and output a file called NEW_FILE_NAME in the mp4 format."

Instead of mp4, you could output an avi, wmv, mpg, or almost any other video file, but I find that mp4 works well as far as quality.